I like to learn new things and some of my current interests include brainstorming, problem solving, innovation, programming, computer science, and more. I’ve listened to a few lectures on Udemy (although their user interface is a bit bulky, and makes it hard for me to go through the lectures quickly), and I’ve just started CS101 (Computer Science) offered by Stanford (!). I started about 2.5-3 weeks behind, but I’ve caught up (Yay freshman engineering coding class!). Why I started this class with only a few weeks left in the quarter, I have no idea…

Oh the things I do to procrastinate … ;p

Don’t stop learning!

-J

This is our colloquial term for what is theoretically called “tech week.”  The terms are interchangeable, but by the end of said week, most actors, crew members, and orchestra members are found using the first.

Tech week means running the entire show with costumes, makeup, lights, sounds, props, and often food every single day.  For OTL, a group without a permanent home, this also means moving, assembling, disassembling, and storing our set across campus every single night.

After getting through this experience, I feel like a weathered veteran and would like to offer my top ten list of ways to get through tech week.

TOP TEN THINGS TO KNOW IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE TECH:

1.Surrender all hopes of getting home any time before 2 am.  If you get home at 1, it will feel awesome; if you get home by 3 you won’t be too disappointed

2.So call is at 5:30? What, that’s so early, right?  Be ready to bring food along with you and to eat quickly backstage.  If you don’t come prepared you might go a day without dinner.

3.Accept the fact that that paper you write this week might not earn top marks, and there’s a very high chance that you are going to sleep through at least one morning class.  It’s only for one week, and we all make mistakes.  Do your best, but realize you aren’t Superman.

Not you.

4.Wear comfortable shoes.  I suppose this one is mostly for the crew.  Cast, you don’t really have a choice about what you wear.  But for crew an entire week on your feet can get really painful before you notice.  When you sit down your feet will be throbbing.  Treat yourself well and wear a quality pair of tennis shoes backstage.

A favorite for backstage wear.

5.Another hint for the crew: if you have any free time during the week, do a load of black laundry.  Soon the end of tech will loom near and you will need to blend in backstage.  Be prepared.

6.Remember that there are people out there who care about you who aren’t part of your show.  If you want them to come see you perform, don’t forget that they exist.  Take time to grab lunch with a roommate or send a quick text to Mom when you have a second backstage.

7.Speaking of texting backstage, make sure your phone is on silent or off.  Try not to carry it on stage.

8.Accept whatever the directors, stage manager, or any other leader tells you to do.  Don’t question their orders.  Things will run much more smoothly if everyone works as a team.  Don’t complain or try to defend yourself during notes when the show is over for the night, it eats up everyone’s time.

9.Don’t take tech too seriously.  Take time to enjoy the company of the people you are struggling with all week.  Dance backstage during your favorite musical number.  If an actor drops a line, laugh it off.  Some of the best inside jokes and theatre memories are formed during tech week.  Don’t forget that.

Crew commandeering some costumes for our own little tap number.

Just hanging out between shows...

10.Remind yourself that you love this.  My first tech week, one of my friends described hell week as being analogous to Christmas.  Ever since, I actually get excited for the stress, pain, and incredible wonders of hours upon hours with the people I love the most.  In the end this is really, incredibly, fantastically fun.  You love these people.  You love this show.  And so will the audience.  Soon it will all be over and you will have that terrible post show depression.  So enjoy this while you can.  It will all be worth it.

It’s tech week:http://www.someecards.com/usercards/nsviewcard/MjAxMi1mYTY1NGY2ZmQ0MTU4NWFh

Superman:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman

Chuck Taylors:http://chucksconnection.com/history1.html

There are a few things I want to do this summer:

• Continue blogging: I am going to have posts automatically submitted. This way, all of you beautiful readers won’t miss me!
• Continue to exercise everyday: From running in the mornings, to getting those push ups in. I want to make sure I keep my habits.
• Finish my Spanish class: I have put my independent Spanish studies on hold while I’m still in school. But I still want to teach myself, so I’ll be studying Spanish while working at camp.

One note on my summer posts: I plan on doing a few special things from doing a series of posts, to doing videos. I want to add some variety to my posts, especially since I’ll be writing them all in the next few weeks. You should add the Buckeye’s Blog to your bookmarks so you don’t miss out this summer!

So my attitude toward my bike is, admittedly, one of exploitation and abuse. I’ve had it since I was about 10 years old (yeah, it’s a little small) and I don’t take particularly good care of it. All this used to be fine.

But then I got a flat tire. DANGIT! 4 weeks before I’ll never ride my bike again, no less.

Fortunately, I have a good friend who I like to consider my “bike doctor” because he has treated several small ailments of my bike/bike lock in the past. I, being quite ignorant, assumed I would need an entirely new wheel or something, and who knew how difficult that would be, and oh no!

But he set me straight. In fact all we needed to do was go to the Columbus Third Hand Bike Cooperative, where there were tools and tubes (for a mere $4!) to enable me to fix my bike.

Third Hand is a really cool place between OSU and Downtown where they’ll teach you to fix your bike and provide you with the tools to fix it for very affordable prices. I’d never been because I always thought it was a little too hipster for me, but I was surprised to find I really enjoyed myself!

One of the first things I learned there was that bike inner tubes (did you know they’re inside the tire–that’s why they’re called inner tubes? mind blown!!!) come from a box and start out flat:

I should have asked him to take a picture of me actually getting my hands greasy (and oh, how greasy they got! good thing Third Hand also has really good handsoap =p) but instead here’s a picture I took of some of their tools:

Anyway, re: the title. So I really felt as we were pulling the inner tube from my bike that it was like surgery! It was like pulling out an intestine or something. To take the health care analogy further, when I took my bike out for a test ride just outside the shop, the brakes were completely useless.

I’m probably making this up but I really thought they were fine going in! In other words, they acquired a malady at the “hospital,” which those of us in health care refer to as a nosocomial infection.

So fixing the brakes took another hour and to my dismay the other bike doctors there kept finding things wrong with my bike, when I really just wanted to go home and study for my Spanish exam tomorrow. (which, you can see I am clearly studying for now..? anyway)

AKA the reason why so many of the people I talk to hate going to the dentist– dentists always find a zillion other things wrong with your mouth besides the toothache you have! And eek, the money and the pain to come!

But as a current and future advocate for oral health, of course I still think you should visit your dentist regularly and do everything he/she tells you needs to be done. And likewise, I will try (..) to take better care of my bike in the future.

The end. Yay!

But that’s where the nice little “I-am-going-to-be-so-prepared” feeling ends. This is time consuming. And there is SO MUCH material. And it’s not always easy. I sleep…let’s just say, much less than usual. My Keurig coffee maker and I have reignited our love affair from way back in the old chemistry days. We’re basically inseparable. It may be the most functional relationship I’ve ever had. It just GETS me.

To be sure, this is a daunting test. I should know, I see old test questions every day, and I’ve taken two full-legnth practice tests. But I’m pretty darn scary when I want to be, too. And so to you, LSAT, I say: I WILL OWN YOU.

Lesson after lesson, practice test after practice test, and question set after question set, I have discovered something. Not about the test, but about myself: I actually like this.

And this is a huge relief. When I decided to switch to Pre-Law, I was going out on a limb. My family was a combination of mildly supportive and mildly concerned. I don’t think anyone thought I knew what I wanted to do, and that I’d change my mind in a month. But I haven’t. And I DID know what I want; I still do. It may have been a little vague at the beginning, but it’s clearing up now. Seeing that I like this type of thinking (logic, logic games, logic, reasoning, and did I mention logic?) and learning that’s necessary for my future career is a great comfort. I needed to know that I could have faith in trusting my gut.

Hopefully, I can remember to trust my gut in five weeks on Test Day when I can’t decide between two answer choices. And hopefully, I can remember to breathe.

I thought those things would attract your attention! Well as you may already know. This Saturday will be the FREE OUAB Skrillex and Mac Miller concert. No big deal though.

Any way, things have been going pretty crazy awesome lately!!

I recently was accepted into the sophomore honorary ROMOPHOS!! Which is a huge honor if you didn’t know. Each upper class rank, sophomore, junior, and senior have two honoraries. And you can choose to apply to either one, but only about 35 people are accepted for either. So compared to the other estimated six to seven thousand people that are freshmen, its amazing that I was accepted!!

Also I recently had two interviews last week. One was for the First Year Connections Team. This is a team of 20 rising sophomores that will host FYE events (first year experience), success series, buckeyes beyond ohio, convocation with Gee at the beginning of the year. AND I GOT IN! Yes, another success! So all of you seniors out there that chose OHIO STATE! You’ll definitely be seeing me around campus next year. So come up to me and say hi and how much you enjoy my blogging. I promise to make next the best freshmen year any will ever have, EVER!!!

And I also had an interview for OURS (ODI undergraduate recruitment society), and I as accepted there too!! It’s focused around talking to minority students and recruiting them for Ohio State and going out to high schools and talking about college in general! I’m very excited at all of these opportunities.

And I still considering research, becoming a course assistant, and becoming a diversity ambassador. But who knows what i should do, especially with semesters upon us! SO here’s my schedule for next year as well.

http://www.schedulizer.com/6u59

Picture break from hiking! I'm wearing the bright green/yellow in the middle ;)

It was truly awesome to be totally away from internet, yet still be in the comfort of a house (I am NOT the camping type…). So despite the lack of internet and cell service and the fact that the water smelled like eggs (sulfur), we were hardly ‘roughing it’ (this place had a hot tub, an HD tv and a full kitchen).

I got to transition into the position of webmaster (which was kind of hard to do without the ‘web’), while I taught the new publicity director everything I knew, and gave her tips on how to do better than I did ;p. We also made goals as an organization to be even more awesome next year than we were this past year.

Being involved as an officer in a growing student organization has been an amazing experience. Not only has it opened my OSU experience to awesome things, like traveling to Chicago last year for Nationals, Cincinnati in March for regionals, or Houston this upcoming November for Nationals 2012, but I’ve met so many awesome people that I may not have encountered otherwise.

For those of you interested in getting involved with a student organization here is some foolproof advice:

• Start Early/ make an impact

Now, this one doesn’t mean that you can’t get involved later on, I just mean if you want to run for a position, don’t make elections the first event that you attend. Start early in the year, get involved throughout the year. Work hard. Be memorable.

• Say the Magic Words

I’ll give you a hint… It isn’t please. The magic words for getting involved in a student organization, is to show up to events and ask, “Do you need help with anything?/Is there something i can help you with?” . Events can be stressful, and even if the person that you ask says no (I don’t know why they would…), they’ll definitely appreciate the thought and will remember you when they do need help!

• Be genuine

This is more a comment on effective leadership, but people trust and respect people more when their character/presence is consistent. No one wants to work with a Jekyll/Hyde.

Peace,

-J

1). We will FINALLY be on the same schedule as the rest of the universe!!

Everyone else on earth is on semesters (I’m pretty sure of that, anyway, but don’t quote me). And now we don’t have to worry about the semesters kids getting all the good summer jobs and internships and big-kid jobs because they get out sooner. The playing field has been leveled! AND, there won’t be that awkward month of doing nothing before school starts because all your friends at semester schools have already left. We can all suffer together!! Isn’t that great?!

2.) Long winter breaks!

Never again will we have to rush back to school immediately after New Year’s. We will finally have time to fully recover.

3.) Summer starts in May!

NOW WE WILL ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO BE OUTSIDE WHEN IT’S GORGEOUS OUT AND NOT STUCK IN A CLASSROOM!! Although this may mean that Oval Beach will have a much shorter season….

But more than that, for me, the start of semesters will also mean the start of my senior year, something so quintessentially bittersweet that the phrase “senior year” is enough to send most people for a trip down memory lane.

Looking back, there are a lot of things I wish I did or tried or saw, and there are also things I’m grateful for that I never expected. I wish I had done some things differently, sure, but I think everyone feels that way.

This last year is not just my last hurrah as an undergrad, but it’s also a second chance. It’s one more year to get things right, however that may manifest itself.

I will leave Ohio State in a year knowing this, above all: I may not have gone where I intended to go or did what I intended to do, but I truly believe that I have gone where I needed to go, did what I needed to do, and most importantly, learned what I needed to be taught.

The weekend of Easter Sunday a friend of mine took me home with her, since she lives in-state. I got to spend the weekend with her sisters and parents instead of moping around my dorm room wishing North Carolina wasn’t so far away. We did everything from dying Easter eggs to searching for Easter baskets and Easter eggs to climbing pine trees. It was so relaxing. I feel like I’ve been adopted. :-D

A few weekends later the Pistol Club here at OSU brought in a concealed carry license instructor, and I got the opportunity to learn about handguns, safety, state laws, protocol, shooting skills, and things of that nature. I now know how to take apart and clean both a semi-automatic and a revolver. And I know that I can shoot left-handed pretty reliably, which, being right-handed, was pretty neat to discover.

In between weekends, my time has been spent studying for midterms, preparing art projects, doing Air Force ROTC, and working on a dance performance with my partner. Social Dance II is definitely my favorite class of the quarter. Its a great way to relax and work off excess energy twice a week. My partner and I have chosen to do East Coast Swing to “Chicks Dig It” by Chris Cagle for our final performance. I’ve never choreographed a dance before, so this has been quite the learning experience. And that’s not even taking into account all the aerials we’ve been learning. Then again, they say the Air Force loves flying. And that’s what I’ll be doing half the dance. :-D

What a move looks like on YouTube

What the move looks like when we try it

And now here we are, with finals four weeks away. I’m sooo ready for summer. By this time next year, we’ll be on semesters, and we’ll be about ready to get out. I’m looking forward to that!

Credits: 

Pic 1: http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/306009_271300882958041_215820338506096_594340_1120130720_n.jpg

Pic 2: http://www.thelantern.com/campus/women-make-their-mark-in-pistol-club-1.2653822#.T6S2Yau6Z2A

Pic 3: http://images2.backpage.com/imager/u/medium/44695360/swing_couple.jpg

Pic 4: http://www.danceanddance.com/styles/Swing.jpg

Recently I posted a blog about how I got the honor of having dinner with the Archie Griffin because of my scholarship program. Well, yet another awesome activity in the life of SSP happened this past weekend, and it’s one that many students will never get the opportunity of ever having: being on the field of the Shoe.

This will now be my fourth time getting to roam the field of the Buckeyes, but this time we were all in fancy dresses and heels, taking pictures for our Night in Old Hollywood Escapade. I took my boyfriend, Nick, who I hoped thought it was as awesome as I did.

Us on the field.

We even shared a 50 yard line kiss. Dreamy, right?

Dinner was served for us beforehand at 5 p.m. at our house cooked by our own cooking committee. There was parmesan chicken, salad, potatoes, fresh fruit and the best part: chocolate covered strawberries. Whosever idea that was, kudos.

The dance was held in the Huntington Club on the fourth floor inside of the Shoe. There was a great DJ with a dance floor, and awesome decorations that gave the place a whole different feel than the one you get during football games.

There were floating candles on the tables surrounded by feather bands and stars. There were even complementary feather boas.

It was kinda strange because this past weekend was a huge prom weekend for those still in high school, like my sister for example. Everyone is spending all this money and talking about prom and posting pictures on Facebook as they forego prom. And I thought my prom days were over long ago. But being the season and having this dance made me feel like I was back in high school (though much more upscale in the Shoe!) and getting all prettied-up and giddy for my handsome date to pick me up (which actually did happen).

It was a picture perfect night.

Literally.

This is my first and only year in the Stadium Scholarship Program, but I will never forget my experiences that I had in it.